


Please don't leave me

by Spottie



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Light Angst, M/M, Memories, Sad, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 06:40:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28952091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spottie/pseuds/Spottie
Summary: "Please don't leave me alone..." Hamlet whispered softly as he sat down next to a headstone. The sun was setting low over the horizon, the air was cold and the wind carried the leaves that could no longer cling to the trees. The leaves had lost their color and dropped dead to the ground, it was a sad sight but the leaves can come back. People can’t.
Relationships: Hamlet/Horatio (Hamlet)
Kudos: 8





	Please don't leave me

"Please don't leave me alone..." Hamlet whispered softly as he sat down next to a headstone. The sun was setting low over the horizon, the air was cold and the wind carried the leaves that could no longer cling to the trees. The leaves had lost their color and dropped dead to the ground, it was a sad sight but the leaves can come back. People can’t.  
“My lord, I would never leave you. I have never left you and I do not plan on leaving you.” Horatio spoke softly to his prince, he wanted to be able to hold him close to his chest, to protect him from the world. Horatio turned his head to look at him. He stared off into the sky watching the sun fade from the sky, allowing the darkness to replace it as if it had taken its final breath from the world.Hamlet didn’t look back at him, he continued to stare with tired lifeless eyes. Horatio moved closer to him, and rested his hand on Hamlet’s freezing one. Hamlet was always cold, no matter how hot the world around him was, he was always so cold, sometimes to the point of shaking. Whenever he was that cold he would go to Horatio for warmth. He had not done that in a long time.  
“My lord...why is it that you’ve never feared death?”  
Hamlet sighed quietly before he rested his head on Horatio’s shoulder. He thought about his lover's words for a moment before he responded.  
“I did fear death...well not death itself. Death is simply a thing that happens to everything in the world, no matter how much something wants to last forever, it won’t. It matters not if you are a king or a pauper, an emperor or a fool, every person in this prison of a world will one day end up as food for the maggots. Everyone eats up every drop of life that they can grasp but are all inevitably eaten by the all powerful force of death.” He paused for a moment to move closer to Horatio wishing he could feel Horatio’s warmth. “People fear death because they fear the unknown; they fear losing the warmth of life. I don’t fear the unknown and I never will...I feared that i would be forgotten...i feared that you would forget me…” He closed his eyes softly, if he had any tears left to cry he would let them run down his pale face and watch them disappear into the earth like he watched so many people do the same.   
“I could never forget you...forgetting someone as rare as yourself would be a crime. I could not live with myself if I allowed you to fade from my mind. I could never forget all the things you showed me.” Horatio smiled softly as he remembered everything that the prince had introduced him to.  
“What made you the happiest?”   
“I think it was…” Horatio dug through his memories, so many things he had done with Hamlet made him happier than anything else in his life ever had. “The times in Wittenberg….the late hours of the night when you would invite yourself into my bed because you were unable to sleep.”  
“Those nights I kept you from your sleep...why would that make you happy?” Hamlet was confused about why anyone would be happy to be woken up because someone else couldn’t sleep.  
“It made me happy to know that you would let me care for you. I loved listening to you tell me about the things you had really wanted from your life. I loved being woken by you joining me in my bed, even if you kept me from sleep I cherished those moments, they were some of the few times that we were able to be alone together.” Horatio watched Hamlet with sad eyes as he waited for his response. Hamlet didn’t answer. Hamlet looked up at Horatio with sad eyes and tried to move the hair from Horatio’s face.   
“I miss those times…” He had only spoken five swords but those words were enough for Horatio to hear the pain in his voice. Hamlet always sounded melancholy, it was simply his regular state of being. His voice always carried a certain heaviness with it that was always tired. Tired of life, tired of the madness of the world around him, tired of the world around him calling him mad, but his voice was different now. His voice was now longing, Horatio could feel the despair and emptiness that resided within his lover. Horatio longed to be able to run his hands through Hamlet’s hair and tell him that he would be okay. He longed for his lover. The days in Wittenberg were simpler, they were both different people then. Hamlet’s depression had only been melancholy, and Horatio was able to keep him and take care of him when he needed to. That had been lost a long time ago. Horatio hung on tightly to those memories but he did not cling to them as he did with Hamlet.   
“Horatio….” Hamlet’s gentle voice broke the silence of the cold night. “Horatio...you need to move on with your life...please do not waste the rest of it trying to bring me back...i want you to be able to find the joy you once had. I wish for you to find a meaning to your life, live as long as you can. You always had a more positive outlook on the world, but you’ve lost it and I want you to find it again.”  
Tears began to well in Horatio’s eyes as he looked at the man he loved more than life itself. “I don’t think I can...I’m not strong enough to move on from you. Now that you have left me, my life has lost its purpose…”  
It had been nearly a year since the death of the prince of Denmark, and Horatio still struggled to accept the fact that he would never be able to hold his lover again, he would never be able to steal kisses from him any time they got to be alone together, he would never be okay again. The country had been able to move on from the tragedy, but Horatio couldn’t. Every night he would bring something to the grave of his prince, letters, flowers, chocolates, everything that Hamlet said made the world more bearable. He wasn’t sure if he could ever move on with his life.   
“Horatio...I want you to be able to move on with your life...but please don’t forget me...don’t leave me.”  
“I don’t want to leave you...i want to join you.”   
Hamlet had heard those words many times over the past year, but they still broke his heart every time he heard them. He knew the pain that Horatio was feeling, it broke his heart to know that the man he loved was in so much pain. He wanted to be able to take Horatio’s pain away, he wanted to watch him live the life that he had once loved so much.   
“Please do not join me...if you ever loved me you will keep living...you won’t succumb to the despair and pain that wants to take you...you wouldn’t be with me even if you did. You are the only man in this world without blood on his hands, you would be allowed to heaven...you would not be damned to this world as i am...I stay trapped in this prison even after shuffling of my mortal coil that had bound me here during life...you would not be damned to the same fate.”  
Sobs shook Horatio’s body, he knew that Hamlet was telling him the truth, he knew that he would never again be reunited with the love of his life. He would never again get to be with him, and that was the most painful thing of all.  
“Hamlet…” he spoke softly as he watched the apparition of his lover begin to fade into the darkness of the night, he wouldn’t be able to stay much longer this time. “Hamlet, I love you.”  
Hamlet opened his mouth to return the words but no sound came out, he was fading. He was gone once again, he was gone once again before he could tell Horatio that he loved him.  
“Please don’t leave me alone…” Horatio whispered softly into the night.

**Author's Note:**

> So this was the first fic I've written in years, I figured I'd pick up writing again and see if I'm any better now than I was awhile ago so if anyone actually reads this I hope you enjoyed it


End file.
